According to this story, the sponsor of a bill to ask Arizona voters if they wish to end funding for the Public Funding program will drop his bill. The bill, SCR 1021, had passed the Senate and the House Judiciary Committee, so this is a surprise.
There was some reason to think that if the bill did pass and the voters did vote in November, they would support continued funding for the program. Arizona’s public funding program, like Maine’s public funding program, covers all partisan state office and does not discriminate for or against any candidate based on the candidates’s partisan affiliation.
As the public sees more news about the Arizona and Maine plans plans for public financing of political campaigns will spread. This is one of the better ideas finally given a chance to work in the market place of our on going collective effort to perfect of our democracy. Those few flaws in the Arizona or Maine plans identified by courts will be corrected in ways that improve the public’s ability to have representative government that is no longer corrupted in favor of the few willing/able to spend the most.